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What Do Warren Buffett & Deepak Chopra Have in Common?

Deepak Chopra is one of the best known and most respected names in mind/body medicine. Warren Buffett is one of the best known and most widely respected names in investment strategies.

What did you think when I mentioned these two names together? Were you curious about why these two highly respected people popped together into my mind? It’s really fairly simple to me…I see them both as “whole brain leaders.”

These two men do not share a common background. They grew up in totally different environments, and were influenced by completely different people and perspectives. Omaha, Nebraska, and New Dehli, India, are “worlds apart” in language and culture. In reading their autobiographies, however, there is a sense that both share a common bond — a strong desire — the desire to contribute to a better world.

One man became a doctor, and the other an investment specialist — very different ways to make their contribution to the world.

Even with their differences, however, they have some significant commonalities.

Both are unique in their approach to life and business, and yet, upon analysis, both have very sucessfully integrated logical, linear thinking with intuitive, imaginative thinking; seeing the whole as more than the sum of its parts — through whole brain thinking and leadership.

Through whole brain thinking and leadership, both have obviously released the creative potential and visual perceptual abilities of the right hemisphere of the brain, together with logical, linear thinking of the left hemisphere, in applying the principles of probability and outcome.

Both come from different perspectives, yet share passion and a belief in possibilities. Neither particularly tries to please everyone with what they do, yet both hold a very deep faith in the path they have chosen.

They both have two more things common to highly successful leaders– peer respect and followers — a lot of them. Both have shown integrity in their work, earning them peer respect, and both have shared the value of what they have learned, gaining them many followers.

Perhaps saying that what both have most in common is that they are whole brain leaders will cause some of my readers to question my judgement. And that’s good. Questions are always good, because with questions begins the search for answers.

I hope you will read their biographies and their interviews. Much of the work they have both done began in the logical, linear left-brain field of thought and action. As you follow their continued success, however, you cannot help but see that only their foray into the right-brain field of thought and action, where intuition and innovation in the visual, perceptive hemisphere, brought them to higher levels of success.

And, the true leadership of both Warren Buffett and Deepak Chopra can be evidenced in their obvious joy in sharing their success. What a wonderful thing to have in common.